We’ve essentially covered this topic without spelling it out as I’m about to. After Jim’s very lovely powerpoint article, I got to thinking about the ill fated Hydris and it’s sequels and came to the conclusion that it’s all the fault of bloody ambition! It has genuinely killed many, many projects. I attributed the death of untitled “Space Horror” to the dreaded 60% in an earlier article, though in retrospect it never even got that far, it never got beyond concept art and a few 3D models. The ambition had utterly creamed that project before it had a chance. At the time, our greatest achievement was a slideshow, but Johnny Ambition had visions of Resident Evil bettering gaming! How was this going to be made? I’ve no idea, but Hydris was definitely worth jilting for it.

One of the few images from Untitled Space Horror

It’s a relative of the same beast that climbs lamp posts shouting “sequel!”, the ambition either outgrows the current project or guts it before it reaches the starting blocks. The Space Horror game is a good example of this. Our untitled survival horror game (set in space, if you hadn’t guessed) began with a prison riot… there it is, the first two words, the first two dominos falling in a very short line of domino shaped dreams, killing the game to bits.

I think this is definitely something that comes with experience. During the dark days of the even darker basic, I remember countless forum posts from people saying, “I’m making a massive multiplayer online game”… no you’re not, you’ve got an idea for something and probably some mad computer skills, but that is still a little unrealistic. Don’t stop thinking about it though! Ambition is a great, great thing, if you have an idea for something mental and completely unachievable, write it the hell down! The more you understand what you’re capable of achieving in any given time frame, the more your original grand idea will evolve to fit and become workable. Zip n’ West for example is still evolving years after it was first conceived.

I like to try and offer some sort of solution to these things, Dome is a good case study. Again the ambition monster was out in force with that one and the game ended with a stand off between Race and a massive Dragon in some sort of cathedral, I believe it was. At about a tenth of the way through, with a deadline rapidly approaching, the painful decision was made to chop the epic in two and finish it at the half-way stage boss. I think it’s human nature to always want what could have been. For me, it was like finding out the original planned ending to Jurassic park 2 and wanting to know what the film would have been like had they never left the damn island!! I too wonder how awesome Dome would have been, had it ended like we planned. At the same time I know if we’d have tried that, the project would never have been finished and so it’s all the better for cutting it in half.

Be ambitious, be damned ambitious! But be preprepared to scale that ambition down to a manageable size and maybe whip a non-alcoholic beverage or 2 in after that 9th pint… yeah as if! (the ambition thing still stands though).

It occurs to me that my childhood of climbing trees and playing computer games may not have been a complete loss. It’s somehow brilliant that I can be whisked back to a period in my life by just listening to a soundtrack from a game of that time. It hasn’t escaped my attention that this is pretty much what I said last time regarding Shenmue and how that experience was so easily accessed when I heard the theme. With that in mind I think I may have to cut this series of articles short, as all I really have to say is, “remember how good this was”, which is no help to anyone. Alternatively, I could just post soundtracks that I genuinely deem to be good, but it would only be opinion pieces and you’re not that bothered about my biased opinions on things. If I have anything constructive to bang on about, regarding game soundtracks in the future, I will. For now though, I’m calling an end to this filler provoking series and I’ll leave you back in the 90’s with some Mega Drive classics!

Playlist

1] Sonic 1 – Green Hill Zone
2] Streets of Rage – Level 1
3] Columns – Main Game
4] Xenon 2 – Main Game
5] Space Harrier – Main Game

Although I think that this pair of articles clearly say something about how important a game soundtrack is, most indie games I’ve played never give much consideration to it, they are usually just some tunes lifted from another soundtrack. It’s a great opportunity to leave a lasting impression with the player and even our own Dome and Hydris themes (yes I am blowing my own trumpet) still take me back to the time when they were being made. It might just be that I am extra sensitive to the old sensory triggered memories (smell gets me to those places quite rapidly too), but don’t pass up the opportunity to create something unique that could possibly stay with the player for a long time. It might even bring them back for another go! If, unlike us, you have no aspiring musicians to create wonderfully catchy tunes, look online and there will be thousands of budding musicians looking for projects to work on, get to it!

Now go and play Dome.

The year is now 2005 and the only one of the four who hasn’t left Coventry is Jim. He’s now in the final year of his degree course and has been given the daunting task of producing a fifteen thousand word dissertation alongside a completed project. He’s had a bit of a slow start to University life (zero programming knowledge, remember), but now he’s got the hang of it, he’s doing alright for himself. Viz, by this time, had already made his degree course look something akin to a play school lesson and walked away with not only a first class degree with honours, but also a couple of awards, just to rub it in. John had spent the intervening years blazing his way through his degree course and somehow still found time to have a crack at games development along the way. As for Richard? Well, he’d discovered that University wasn’t for him and had moved on to other things.

Now at this point, Jim’s in a bit of a pickle; that dissertation isn’t going to write itself. The only upside is, he’s been told it can be on anything he likes, so long as it’s in the realm of computing, and he can use anything (and I stress anything) at his disposal. In fact one particular lecturer, who shall remain anonymous, actually pointed out to a crowded lecture theatre that, “If your Dad works with a supercomputer, then use that supercomputer!”. Well, unfortunately for Jim, his Dad worked in a car factory and they definitely didn’t have any supercomputers there… but what he did have, now that they had all come back, was a budding games development company in his kitchen, so he decided to use that for his final project instead.

Now, this may on face value seem like a rather obvious and easy choice to make, but it’s worth pointing out that Psync had never actually produced a completed project, and putting your future in the hands of Psync Int. was a little bit risky to say the least. A meeting was quickly arranged and it was decided that, for better or worse, they were going to have a crack at it. Obviously, Jim would have to do the bulk of the work himself (it was his project after all), but the others agreed to help out where they could, without it getting to a stage where such help could be called ‘cheating’ (such a nasty word).

The idea was simple, they would produce a 2D educational game aimed at school children. Rather than including a complicated game engine, levels would essentially be made up of a series of on screen questions that the user would need to answer correctly in order to progress. True to the emerging style of this particular group of developers, the idea changed overnight to incorporate a fully 3D environment with real world physics, included at least one playable platform level, and was designed to be at least twice as big as anything they could feasibly achieve in the allowed time frame. Yes, that night, Dome XIII was born.

This was a new age for Psync Interactive, the machine began to wurr like never before. Over the next six months, productivity grew and grew to a point where sleep was sometimes forgone altogether. The most infamous of these occasions resulting in a mammoth 42 hour shift! An experience that would live long in the memories of those involved.

During the summer of 2006, the first deadline ever faced by Psync reared it’s ugly head and the project would be submitted. Did it work? Not exactly… a lack of sleep doesn’t really promote accuracy or quality assurance, but it wasn’t a million miles off. In fact, thanks to an early decision to half the amount of levels in the game, and a greater emphasis on FMV sequences, it was virtually on the money.

A few months later, the results were announced and Jim had bagged himself 85% on his dissertation. Coupled with some fine performances in the other six modules he completed that year, he’d managed to achieve a first class degree and the highest mark by a student on a computing course that year. It was Psync’s first completed computer game and it was a notable success.

This brings us to another key stage in the life of Psync Interactive, it’s time our heroes left the sanctuary of education and faced the big wide world alone, or perhaps not quite as alone as they thought they would…

See you for part three next week.

I’ve never really been able to pinpoint why, when a game has so many hours to work on destroying your heart strings, it fails faster than a soggy toaster. Certain games do it brilliantly, but shouldn’t all games be this good? I’ll be the first to put my hand up and admit Dome XIII never even remotely attempts to make the player feel any emotion other than the occasional splash of humour (fart gags). That being said I still get a little sad at the loss of mute, but in Dome’s defence it was a kid’s game! Also, we’re not paid to make these things and at the time I was oblivious to almost everything, so it was never going to be a masterpiece.

Storytelling is brilliant and I love the fact it can be accomplished in so many different ways. That’s quite a ridiculous statement I accept, you could say the same of “art”, but they are the same thing (well for the most part). If a child paints the clichéd picture of a house with a tree and a smiley sun and you asked what the painting is about, then there will be a story. For example, they might say that a squirrel lives in the tree, which the dog chases. The squirrel that is missing from the picture, incidentally, only comes out when it’s cloudy and the dog only comes out to chase the squirrel… obviously! It’s an offbeat example, but there you go, there are countless ways to tell a story.

After seeing so many games try to follow the story telling rules laid down by cinema and not doing such a great job, it’s refreshing to see a story in a game be told in a different way. Even if that means reverting back to the days where cut scenes didn’t exist and the story was told with on-screen text. In a way, that can be more engrossing, the player can make their own mind up about what the character sounds like, much like you do with a book.

The Company of Myself by 2DArray play it here

I recently played through a great little flash game called, “The Company of Myself”, a short puzzle game with a very nice game mechanic. If you have any interest in clever game mechanics then I order you to play this. Alternatively, if you have any interest in story telling, play it! It’s quite amazing how poignant the picture puzzle is. Not to the point of tears, I was never attached to any character here, but it still pulls at the emotional door knob enough to open it a crack making a feint “aww” sound (out of context titles, they’re the future). Unfortunately, for this game after some  very clever story telling the epilogue is just daft, funny, in fact aim to complete it for that alone!

First Person Shooters aren’t really my bag, I’m bloody awful at them, but I can appreciate the way some of them, like Half-life, Bioshock and I’m told Modern Warfare 2, tell a story. It’s a way of telling stories only games can do. I think the obvious advantage the FPS genre has over third person is you are the central character. Any dialogue is directed right at you and moral choices are obviously going to have a little more effect on you than if you sit there making some chap do it and watch him be scorned by every other character in the game.

 A friend of mine was rather upset when one of his buddies in MW2 bit the dust as he’d formed quite a bond with the character. This is a great example of what I’m attempting to convey. He had spent a good few days on various missions with this character to the point the character was a friendly and welcome face. So when this character died (as part of the plot), the player can genuinely feel some sort of emotion. Outside of real life that can only happen in this media.

In short, I like it when a game attempts to tell a story a different way and I love it when it connects with me on an emotional level. True, most new and different ways will probably never attract a mainstream audience and will be branded “Indie” but that’s another article altogether.